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Picture this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund in a Napoli shirt. Next, place that with a sad-looking the Slovenian forward sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Don't bother locating an actual photo of him missing; background information is the enemy. Then, include some goal stats in a large, comical font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes strikes in the premier European competition while Sesko isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. Nor will you highlight that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus Belarus and Greece, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates many more chances. If you manage online for a major brand, pure engagement is your livelihood, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is your sworn enemy.

Thus the wheel of content turns. The next job is to scan a lengthy podcast featuring Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where he prefaces his remarks by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. No one wants that. Just ensure "weird" and "Sesko" are paired in the title. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has long been one of my preferred times to watch football. Leaves fall, winds shift, the teams and tactics are still fresh, everything is new and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The summer market is shut. Nobody is mentioning the quadruple yet. Everyone are in contention. At this precise point, anything is possible.

However, for similar reasons, mid-autumn has long been one of my most disliked times to read about football. For while nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? Please an answer immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like Patient Zero in this respect, a player inextricably trapped between football's two countervailing, non-negotiable forces. The need to delay final conclusions, to let layers of technical texture and strategic understanding to mature. And the imperative to generate permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of takes and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and meaningless contrasts, a puzzle that can not truly be circled.

It is not my aim to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a highly unpredictable team, found the net twice, and taken a mere of 116 contacts with the ball. What exactly are we evaluating? Nor will I attempt to replicate Gary Neville's and Ian Wright's seminal masterwork "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts argue passionately on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it is more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching him at his former club: a big, fast racing car of a striker, playing in a team ideally suited to his talents: given the freedom to attack but also the freedom to miss. Partly this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "brutal verdicts" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the largest and most ruthless gap between the patience and space he needs, and the opportunity he is going to get.

We saw an example of this during the international break, when a widely shared infographic handily stated that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a poll of 20 agents. Naturally, the media are not the only ones in such behavior. Club channels, influencers, anonymous X accounts with a oddly high number of pornbot followers: all parties with skin in the game is now essentially operating along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards provocation.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What is happening to us? Are we aware, on some level, what this infinite stream of aggravation is doing to our minds? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that each aspect about them is now basically content, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, partly this is because United are United, the entity that keeps nourishing the narrative, a big club that must constantly be producing the strong emotions. However, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of judgment most visibly and cruelly observed at this season, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been coveting footballers, praising them, salivating over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those same players are now being disdained as broken goods. Should we start to be concerned about a new signing? Was Arsenal's purchase of Viktor Gyökeres necessary? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he faces Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and yet in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a a report on someone who went to the store half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star past his prime. The striker waste of money. The coach bald.

Perhaps we have failed to understand the way the storyline of football has started to replace football itself, to inflect the way we watch it, an whole competition repivoted around talking points and reaction, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we scroll through our phones, unable to detach from the constant flow of takes and more takes. It may be this player bearing the brunt at present. But in a way, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience in this process.